Thursday, July 12, 2012

LEGO Vaughn: Name Art

I've never given a second thought to the names that were chosen for my nephews and nieces.

Until last month.

When for a couple of minutes I wished that Vaughn would have been a Tom.

Or Ed.

Or Bo.

That's right. I longed for him to share a moniker with one of the Duke boys from Hazzard county.

It was only for a few minutes while planning out his LEGO name art.

LEGO has a Digital Designer feature on their website that you can use to build models. My hope was to use that to plan everything out, but Anthony and I couldn't get it to work on either of our computers.

So, I went to Photoshop, my ol' reliable and ever faithful standby, and started building it from the bottom up.

Starting with the eight gray base plates and their 48 rows of tiny connector dots.

Next I sought out a blocky font that would translate well into LEGO bricks.

I went with Courier. And manipulated and stretched each letter so that it lined up with the dots on the gray plates below it.

Sherri wanted to keep it clean and tied in with the bedspread, so she chose red letters with a white outline and a beige border.

Here is where I secretly wished for the name change. At the point when I had to sit and figure out exactly how many and what size of LEGO bricks Sherri needed to order.

First I figured out the most cost effective LEGO by calculating the 'price per dot'. It is the 2x8 brick coming in at 1.875¢. Followed by the 1x10 for 2.5¢.

You're welcome.

I tried to fill it in first with the LEGOs she had already ordered and had on hand and then put in the 2x8s wherever I could. 2x8s are the big green squares if you are curious.

And then I counted them all. Multiple times because counting isn't my thing. Likely because I didn't go to Preschool.

Which is also the reason that I say inappropriate things in social situations. Because I didn't have that extra year of practice with my 4-year-old peers.

I'm just going to go ahead and blame all of my short comings on No Preschool Education. I bet you anything that some Little Lambs education would have stopped me from driving Sherri's Suburban on top of the LEGO bases that they had lying out on the garage floor.

I am sure of it.

You might think that the cost per dot is high, but let me tell you, they are resilient little bastards.

After cleaning off my tire marks, Anthony and Sherri glued the gray plates to a flat plywood backing. You can't just butt up two base plates against each other and still get the LEGOs to snap on, so the red LEGOs in the picture are keeping the plates perfectly spaced while the glue is drying.

When it came time to snap the bricks to the front, we started by placing the tops of the letters on the board just to double check that things were spaced evenly.

And then finished with the outlines so that any miscalculations would flush themselves out before we had a bulk of the letter filled in.

I was off by a dot or two in a few places.

It was a simple fix, but still, I blame No Preschool.

Oh wait. Back up. If you are first-born then you are going to want to make sure that the gray LEGO plates are glued down in a way that the words "LEGO" that are on each dot are facing the same way. Then place all the bricks in with their words correctly positioned as well.

Sherri's attention to detail is fierce.

Anthony put on those beige ones in disarray. First-born FAIL.

We were sadly out of town already before the ceremonial name art hanging. But it now hangs proudly above his dresser.

And at this very moment, I am so grateful that his name is Vaughn. That art is big and bold and perfect for the LEGO lovin' cherub that he is. My hugable, lovable Vaughn.

Besides, LEGOs don't seem like an interest for a Bo. Neither does Preschool.

Just me and my friend Bo sittin by the barn trying to count clay bricks until the numbers get too high.

2 comments:

To hang the art we found the studs, took out a 2x8 piece, drilled through the wood and baseplate into the stud and then screwed it to the wall. We had to chip out the circle on the back of the 2x8 LEGO that interfered with the screw but since we used the 2x8 LEGOs we were able to reposition it with no trouble and it stayed in place.